Hey party people,

This is just a quick story that happened today that made me feel pretty good. It probably won’t have the same impact on anyone else as it did on me, but it was pretty incredible motivation for me.

I’d been having a pretty mentally slow day. I slept in pretty hard and just generally got off to a rough start. So when I started trying to study today, I was having troubles remembering things, I was reading things wrong, and it was getting frustrating. And then I started having troubles keeping awake. So I thought, alright, I’ll change my environment. Down the street from me, about a seven minute walk, is a Starbucks. I gathered some change and set off with my array of study stuff. Woohoo!

So there I am, studying away. I was still making mistakes but I was AWAKE, and that was great. About ten minutes from closing time, this guy was at the sugar/cream/whatever station doing his thing. I happened to be sitting right there. I had my RTK open, and my RTK notes open, writing away. He looks over, and he’s got this smile on his face, and he says “is that Chinese?” (which, of the few times people have said anything about my Japanese stuff, is what they ALWAYS call it). Naturally, I say “no, it’s Japanese.”

The conversation goes on – he asks me why I’m learning, we talk about Japan, about him immigrating to Canada (he didn’t say where he moved from but his accent sounded Cambodian to me) and about travel in general. Towards the end of the conversation he says “what’s your name by the way?” so I tell him it’s Justin (because it is). Then he says “well Justin, I have to tell you, I’m really proud of you for all this work you’re doing” which, first of all, wow. I kinda laugh and say thanks, because I’m awkward as all hell, and then he nails me with this: “I’m going to tell my kids to be more like Justin; get out and see the world and learn a language.” And he was SO sincere about it! I was kinda grinning my whole walk home, because it had been a pretty crappy day in general, and that turned it right around.

I think I’ll be studying at Starbucks more often if this is the kind of feedback I can expect. Hellz yeah.

To make this a bit more interactive, has anyone else had anything like this happen to them? Let’s have us some stories!

Cheers!